


One Hundred Kinds of Prayer

by sixappleseeds



Category: The Old Guard (Movie 2020)
Genre: Brief but graphic violence, Gen, Nicky is very tired, Pre-Canon, major character death (he gets better), post-siege of Jerusalem
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-18
Updated: 2021-01-18
Packaged: 2021-03-12 20:48:12
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,386
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28641723
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sixappleseeds/pseuds/sixappleseeds
Summary: How had he not felt this badly during the weeks he spent killing his companion? Perhaps it was because the rage which had lent him such energy then was wholly absent now. Nicolo glanced back at Yusuf and offered a smile.
Relationships: Joe | Yusuf Al-Kaysani/Nicky | Nicolò di Genova
Comments: 8
Kudos: 22





	One Hundred Kinds of Prayer

**Author's Note:**

> Title is from a poem by Rumi, translated by [sharq-zadeh of Persian Poetry in English](https://twitter.com/PersianPoetics/status/1344538854754283520?s=20):
> 
> "Today we're broken,  
> broken like every other day, 
> 
> open not the door of worry,  
> grab the lute and play! 
> 
> There are one hundred kinds of  
> prayers and prostrations 
> 
> when one faces their beloved's  
> beauty as they pray."

After three days of walking the road to Damascus together, Nicolo finally realized why his companion was murmuring at odd intervals. At first it had seemed the man was muttering to himself, the whispered ravings of a soldier barely clinging to a truce with his enemy. But the mutterings occurred with some consistency, though they were made without pause or acknowledgment of the pace both men set as they sought to distance themselves from the horror of Jerusalem. It took Nicolo waking early on the fourth morning of their journey, well before dawn and during his companion’s watch, to connect the pieces of what he’d observed.

He’d woken early and resented it, feeling robbed of a few minutes more of precious sleep. For all that his body seemed disinclined to die, a circumstance which still baffled and troubled him, he was as prone to exhaustion as ever. He had no scars or even any bruises to show for the days spent fighting his enemy, this man he now traveled with, but weariness plagued him. Between the roasting summer heat, infrequent food, and a traveling companion who yet seemed likely to murder him if Nicolo so much as bared his teeth, and sound sleep was cherished memory.

He opened his eyes. Barely silhouetted against a greying sky, his companion stood, hands outstretched, murmuring in his own tongue. After a few moments, he crossed his arms and bowed his head, voice low and even. Nicolo held his breath.

Their truce was precarious in its arrangement, cobbled from the limited language they shared and dependent, as most truces were, on the belief that neither party would violate the other’s trust. It was possible that this man, so clearly his enemy, would disembowel Nicolo while he slept, or remove from him crucial pieces of his person and carry them far away. Perhaps he might take Nicolo’s head to Damascus, and leave his body for the jackals to fight over. Perhaps an injury like that would kill him for good.

He wasn’t sure his companion would do such a thing, but Nicolo had thought of it himself and if he had thought of it, had wondered if there was a limit to this never-ending life, surely his companion had too. A distressing portion of his waking hours these past few days had been spent brooding over the risk of falling asleep under this man’s watch; if there was some way he could be killed for good and if this man would figure it out. He’d wondered, too, if he should try it first.

Watching the man now, still on the dark side of dawn, seeing him pray to his god with a reverence Nicolo recognized but rarely felt, a hazy realization drifted to the surface of his still sleeping mind: He no longer despised this man enough to try such a thing. He had killed this man, been killed by him, more times than he could remember over the past two weeks, killed with rage and fear and grim determination, hoping each time that death would stick. Death for his foe, death for him; toward the end it had ceased to matter, so long as one of them finally stayed dead. 

But death had turned its face from both of them. Nicolo thought he should perhaps stop trying to get its attention. 

His companion knelt, tilting his face to the sky. Nicolo heard the steady murmur, recognized the cadence of prayer even if none of the repeating sounds made sense. In a rush of feeling so intense Nicolo winced against a sudden welling of tears, he remembered his home church, the candles and the windows and the way his footsteps had been enveloped by a great and listening silence. He hadn’t prayed since the siege had reached its terrible conclusion. It felt like years ago. It was probably less than a month. But how could he appeal to his saints when even death looked past him? 

A long silence. Then — a hand on his shoulder. Nicolo opened his eyes. 

.

When the sun became too hot and the very air felt like standing inside an oven, his companion, surer of the local geography than Nicolo had yet the chance to become, paused and gestured toward the next rise. They’d spent the morning traveling through an increasingly elevated country, going up and down along narrow goat paths that reminded Nicolo uncannily of the hills around his home. 

He followed his companion over one more hill, and looked down into an olive grove. His companion — Nicolo had yet to figure out how to ask him his name — gestured onward. The shade under the trees looked like dense blocks of shadow against scrubby grass, and promised nothing but relief from the sun. Nicolo hefted his pack and walked down.

They would spent the remainder of the day hiding from the sun, each sheltering under his own tree and swatting at flies. After sunset, his companion would leave for an interval and return with fresh water and food, usually dates and bread. Thus fortified, they’d walk on for several more hours, under a canopy of stars and accompanied by the cries of jackals in the hills around them, before finding somewhere to sleep. Nicolo would take first watch; his companion the second. This was their routine. Nicolo settled against the trunk of his chosen tree and closed his eyes. Strange how quickly things become habit. 

There was a village farther down the sloping hill, and a spring cascaded by, not far from where he and his companion rested. They were alone, though in the distance Nicolo heard the noisy opinions of a herd of goats. A hot breeze ruffled his hair. With the tree against his back, Nicolo fell into a doze as the day slipped by.

Then, thinly, carrying over the flies and the breeze and the muttering goats like the call of some distant siren, came a sound Nicolo had learned to identify. There was the long, clear cry, followed by ululating vowels that even now made the hair rise on the back of his neck. It went on, impossibly long notes and trilling sounds tumbling after. Whether these repeating cries made a chanted verse or a song Nicolo didn’t know, but he knew what it meant. An invocation, or an invitation, to all the faithful infidels he’d come to this land to fight. Even now the experience of hearing this call was marked as indelibly with memories of his countrymen’s disgust as with his own precarious wonder. It was nothing like the sound of church bells. He was very far from home.

Under the shade of the olives, his companion was a shadow, features indistinct, several trees away. Nicolo watched as he stood, and raised his arms, just as he had this morning.

“Go,” Nicolo said, in the common tongue he’d learned from merchants back home. The other man dropped his arms and looked over.

Nicolo waved toward the village. The chanter seemed to be taking his time; maybe it wasn’t too late. “Go,” he said again. “If you like. To your praying.” 

A long moment passed, during which Nicolo returned his companion’s level stare. He had felt this man’s blood spray over his hands, heard his struggling cries, felt his heart stop, more times than he cared to remember. He had felt the agony of dying, over and over, under this man’s gaze. 

“Maybe you praying to the wrong god,” Nicolo added, and wondered, as the man’s eyes flared, if he would die again today. “Maybe not.” He shrugged. “Still, you praying. I see you praying. It’s good.” He wished his command of this stilted language was better. He nodded toward the village. “Go to your people. I stay here.” 

His companion waited another beat, then reached for his pack. Nicolo wondered if he was about to be abandoned entirely, and he wondered why that thought should bother him, but the man crossed to him and dropped the bag beside Nicolo’s feet. “I will return after prayers,” he said, his handling of the merchants’ tongue better than Nicolo’s. “You will wait for me?” 

“Yes,” he replied, caught by the sensation that the currents between them were shifting, bringing Nicolo toward territory he hadn’t known existed. “I wait.”

As his companion loped off down the hill, Nicolo hauled the pack up next to his own, against the trunk of the tree. Above him sunlight filtered through thousands of tiny leaves, rustling in the dusty breeze. There were no olive groves in the hills above his city. His people grew grapes. It occurred to Nicolo that he’d never seen olives growing, only tasted their fruit later, from barrels bought from the harbor markets. These seemed several months away from harvest. Perhaps he would still be here, in this land, when that time came. He wasn’t sure, drifting on the edge of sleep, whether that thought made him happy or not. 

.

It is an unpleasant sensation to be stabbed, even when one possesses a miraculous ability to heal from any wound. Nicolo woke with a knife in his chest, his attacker having missed his heart in favor of a glancing blow off rib and into lung. For as often as he’d been killed these past few weeks the novelty of pain should have faded, but Nicolo gasped, tears streaming, as his body jerked beyond his control. His attacker, a man in robes as tattered as his own, hissed. He flung himself on top of Nicolo, grasping the knife hilt and twisting.

Nicolo screamed in agony and anger. It seemed he would die again today after all. Too late he realized his cries might be heard in the village. If someone came and found him dead, it would be difficult for his companion to explain. Nicolo’s last thought was one of regret, that he had interrupted what should have been a time of prayer for his friend. 

He woke some time later, residual pain pulsing like an echo through his chest. The knife was gone, as was his attacker. Seated by his feet, looking fierce, was his companion.

“Hello,” Nicolo said, voice rough. The other man turned, glowering. “Sorry,” he added, which was woefully insufficient but still, he hoped, conveyed the essence of what he wanted to say. Sorry for the mess. Sorry for not being more watchful. Sorry for falling asleep. Sorry, because now we’ll have to move on again. 

His companion’s scowl did not lessen, but he leaned back and gestured with a jerk of his chin. Nicolo sat up carefully. A few trees away, there lay his attacker, bound, rather bloody, but alive. When he saw Nicolo awake, his eyes widened and he began to struggle against his bonds. Nicolo looked back at his companion, who shrugged. 

“I told him, you would decide his fate. It is only right.” 

He stared at the bound man, at his blackened eye and the way blood oozed from his nose down into the rag binding his mouth. If Nicolo killed him, he would remain dead. The face of every man he’d known who died at the hands of corsairs and Saracens, and the names of many more, flooded Nicolo’s mind. Every one of them, and every surviving acquaintance too, would leap at the chance to kill their killers.

Nicolo pushed to his feet and stepped closer. The man before him began to weep. 

It would be what was right.

Nicolo took out his own knife, and cut the man’s bonds.

“You met a stranger on the road,” Nicolo said in his own tongue, as the man stared up at him. “One who was vulnerable, one who offered you no harm, and you caused him great harm.” Behind him, Nicolo heard the murmur of his companion translating. 

“This is a sin against God, yours and mine. You do not know who you have harmed today. But now you have seen what I am capable of.” 

It was a suggestion that flirted with blasphemy, though he had not lied. “You do not deserve to live,” he continued. “And still I will let you live. But know this: If I or my companion learn that you have caused harm to another ever again, we will make certain your mother has no body, no piece of you remaining, over which to mourn.” 

His attacker seemed frozen with shock. Nicolo changed his grip on the knife. “Unless you would like me to kill you now?”

The man barely waited for the translation, rendered into a growl that sounded more threatening than Nicolo had meant it. He scrambled to his feet, gathered his torn robes about him, and bolted up over the hill.

Nicolo collapsed against the tree. His companion, gaze edging toward wry, watched.

“I think,” Nicolo said, still in the language of his home. “It is right to live with the consequences of your choices. God will judge you for your whole life. If you are given the opportunity to try again, you should take it.” 

The man nodded, the gesture conveying both the sense that he had different opinions, and that he wouldn’t disagree.

“Perhaps you could explain,” Nicolo added, propping himself up. “Why I have been speaking in that clumsy merchants’ tongue all these days if you understand Ligurian so well?”

Now the man opposite him smiled for the first time. It was a startlingly beautiful expression.

“You seemed,” he replied, accented but clear. “Very certain that I did not know any of your languages.” 

Nicolo managed a laugh. “You should call me Nicolo,” he said.

“Yusuf,” the other man replied. “I am glad you are not dead.”

“I am also glad.” He looked down at his tunic, torn and thoroughly blood-soaked. “I liked this even less than all the times you tried.”

Yusuf shook his head. His smile made Nicolo want to be funny, even though he’d never thought of himself as a humorous man.

“We’ve been invited to break our fast with them tonight.” Yusuf nodded down the hill. “I had told them you were resting…” His gaze flicked to Nicolo’s clothes. 

It would be ungracious to return an offer of hospitality with the implication that Nicolo had been harmed in the village’s own olive grove, even if that was the truth. He sighed. “I will wear my cloak,” he said, though the day was yet hot enough that even the thought of covering himself with his cloak was exhausting. 

“We will say it happened on the road,” Yusuf said, and Nicolo nodded.

.

There was some shock when Nicolo followed Yusuf down the goat path into the village, because even the cloak held tight against his chest couldn’t conceal the mess of his tunic. It was perhaps dishonest to stumble, and Yusuf cast him a glance Nicolo could only describe as sardonic, but he was very tired. How had he not felt this badly during the weeks he spent killing his companion? Perhaps it was because the rage which had lent him such energy then was wholly absent now. He glanced back at Yusuf and offered a smile. Yusuf, whom Nicolo was beginning to learn was quite a humorous man indeed, rolled his eyes and flung an arm around Nicolo’s shoulders. 

The elder women of the village tut-tutted as Yusuf related an abbreviated version of their story, and the men tsked in a way that encompassed the sorry state of the world in these times. Before long Nicolo found himself at a sheltered place below the village, where the mountain spring had been dammed into a shallow pool.

“So you may bathe,” Yusuf said, bringing soft linen towels and a worn but clean tunic. “We will pretend I dressed your wound,” he continued, setting down a small pot, likely salve, and some strips of bandage. “It is easier than letting the old women at you.”

The water was icy, almost shocking on so hot a day. Nicolo watched old blood and days of sweat and dust sluice off him and down the hillside. “Perhaps I prefer the company of old women.” 

Yusuf waded into the pool beside him. Nicolo averted his eyes. “Stay here with them, then,” he said. “Learn my language with all their peasant slang.” 

Nicolo sat in the pool, growing pleasantly numb. If he slouched, the water reached his chin. It was the first time he’d been so submerged since landing on these shores. Yusuf remained standing, back to the afternoon sun, and cleaned himself with much splashing. A week earlier, and Nicolo would have learned presently what it felt like to drown. Now, as cold water flowed over his tired body in an evergreen grove outside a village that likely did not exist on any map, Nicolo smiled up at his companion. “I would rather learn your language from you,” he said, and ducked his head under the water. 

.

He rested after that, reclining on a straw-stuffed mat someone had brought for him, up on one of the low, flat-roofed buildings that comprised the village’s homes. Junipers spread above him. He could hear the murmur of several voices from the house below, and the occasional clatter of pots and pans. The breeze, hot but steady enough to keep the flies at bay, brought tantalizing smells of a feast in preparation. Nicolo wondered, feeling his stomach clench with hunger, if he might be allowed to partake, when it was all ready.

Yusuf sat below, talking with several men from the village. Nicolo listened to the sound of his voice, distinct over the other voices of the villagers, and thought about the anger, and indeed the hatred, that had fueled his drive to murder, again and again. 

He listened, eyes closed, to the sound of his companion’s voice, and to the sounds of the village that had welcomed them both, two strangers on the road in dangerous times. 

The invocation he’d heard that afternoon came again, waking him from warm, contented doze. Above him the sky was deepening toward sunset, and the breeze was finally losing some of its furnace-like heat. Nicolo sat up, still tired but no longer weary, and watched as dozens of people, men and women and a few children too, filed into the building at the far end of the little village. 

Then he laid back down and stared at the sky through the juniper branches, as the setting sun painted it pink and gold.

Yusuf found him a short while later. Nicolo opened his eyes to see his companion gazing down at him, his curly hair haloed by the pale blue of twilight. 

“I fell asleep again,” Nicolo said, unmoving. 

“All you do is sleep,” Yusuf said, but his voice was teasing. He sat down. “We will pray once more, and then we break our fast.” 

“I cannot pray with the others,” Nicolo murmured. There was a part of him that longed for the fellowship he witnessed here in this village, but it was the same part of him that longed, always, for the familiarity of home. 

Yusuf waved a hand. “Of course not.” He shifted closer, knee brushing Nicolo’s hip. “They know you are Frankish.”

Nicolo sat up, barely stopped himself from looking around. Beside him, Yusuf raised a brow. “But,” Nicolo said. He touched the clothes he wore, and the mat he rested on. “They offered me no harm.” 

“Of course not,” Yusuf said again. “You are peaceful, and so you are treated peacefully. Besides,” he added, smirking. “With me here, you do not need to worry about such things.” 

.

Yusuf joined the village for prayers again, shortly after sunset. Nicolo, moving carefully, descended from his place on the roof and propped himself up under a spreading oak tree outside the mosque. He tried to look as if he still had wounds to be pained over, and closed his eyes.

He was not an angel, as he’d allowed his attacker earlier to believe. Surely he was still only a man, even if death, for the time being, looked past him. And if he was a man, then God would take into account all the deeds of his life, see them and judge them. If Nicolo’s life might be longer than most, it seemed crucial to be responsible for the weight of his actions.

Under the murmur of prayers coming from the mosque, Nicolo whispered one of his own. The familiar rhythms of the Pater Noster enveloped him, grounding him like they had so many times before. But for the first time in longer than he could remember, the prayer felt not like a shield against the wicked, but rather a blanket of deep and abiding comfort. He prayed to his God, Yusuf to his; there was no wickedness here. Opening his eyes, Nicolo smiled.

Across the square, several small children, all too young to be bothered with prayers, were skulking sneakily into the lamp light toward him. He met the gaze of one of them, and waved.

By the time Yusuf and the others emerged, slipping sandals back on at the mosque’s threshold, Nicolo had acquired a small cadre of children, and was not doing a good job of pretending to be injured. One child, barely out of infancy, had wedged himself onto Nicolo’s lap, while three more ranged around him. There were a few women, mothers and grandmothers, seated under a porch directly across from him, ostensibly engaged in their own prayers. One of the older children was patiently teaching Nicolo phrases, despite constant interruptions of giggles by all the others.

“Yusuf,” he called, as if he had not spent these past hours imagining the feeling of his companion’s name in his mouth. “I am at last learning to speak your language.” As Yusuf turned toward him, half-smiling, Nicolo repeated one of the phrases the children had taught him. There was a burst of childish shrieks. Yusuf, and indeed several of the men near him, stopped abruptly. Jaws dropped. 

Then Yusuf threw back his head and laughed. “I told you they would only teach you terrible things,” he said over the others’ guffaws. “You have just said something very rude about your mother.” He shooed children out of the way and reached down a hand.

Nicolo grasped it and stood. “What she doesn’t know won’t harm her.” He felt more alive than he had in months. Maybe ever. He dropped Yusuf’s hand, and grinned.

.

They broke their fast with dates, and cold water, seated on brightly patterned rugs around the little village square. Under the flickering light of lamps, the women brought out dish after dish of food from their houses: stacks of flatbread and bowls of steaming vegetables, heaps of almonds and pistachios, dried fruit and small white cheeses. Two women, moving carefully, carried a very large plate mounded with rice flecked with chicken and spices, to the rug where Nicolo had seated himself. The last time he’d seen so much food had been at home, at the feast his family held before he and his brethren departed for the Holy Land. It seemed a very long time ago. 

Yusuf sat at his left, and one of the village’s elder men at his right. Several other men were seated with them. Families gathered on their own rugs nearby, and children darted between, chasing each other amid bursts of giggles. Everyone was feasting. Nicolo tried to reconcile this with his memories of Jerusalem, but it was impossible. He would think about it later. 

“They want to know, how are you feeling?” Yusuf said, nudging him. Nicolo looked over at his companion as Yusuf handed him a plate piled high with food.

“Who?”

Yusuf gestured with his bread. “Our hosts. How are you feeling?”

Nicolo set down his plate and looked around. He met the gazes of each of the men seated at their rug, and, beyond, a few of the elder women nearby, clearly listening too. “Better,” he said truthfully. He touched a hand to his chest. “I am feeling better, I thank you. You are most generous hosts, and I — my companion and I — are blessed by your kindness.” He paused as Yusuf translated. “And,” he continued. “I will remember you in my prayers. May God look kindly upon you all.” 

Everyone murmured at this, even Yusuf, but before Nicolo could ask why, one of the men scooped even more food onto Nicolo’s plate, someone said something else, and everyone laughed.

“You have to eat all that, you know,” Yusuf said, even as another man heaped more food onto Yusuf’s plate. “After those beautiful words, you wouldn’t want to insult our hosts.”

Nicolo nodded. “Certainly not.” He picked up his bread.

.

Much later, after more food than Nicolo had possibly ever eaten at one time, after countless cups of bitter tea and sweetened almond candies, after letting the sounds of conversation and laughter wash over him for hours, he and Yusuf hoisted themselves onto the flat roof of the mosque to sleep. Everyone was on their roofs tonight; it was apparently a summertime custom. The stars spread out above them, a dome of speckled light, with the waning moon rising over the horizon. 

“Yusuf,” he said softly, staring at the stars.

Beside him, his companion shifted. “Nicolo?”

The currents between them had changed, over these last hours. It was evident in the warmth of their voices and in the way their bodies curved toward each other, as if they cradled some new thing there, too small yet to name. There was so much to this world Nicolo had not known existed, even when he’d woken that morning.

“I would still like to go with you, to Damascus.” He turned away from the sky to gaze instead at the lines of his companion’s profile. “If you would like the company.” 

Yusuf was silent, but his eyes glittered with starlight as he looked back at Nicolo.

“I would like that very much,” he said at last, and Nicolo caught the white of his teeth in the darkness.

A smile grew between them, and it was as much a gift as the miracle of their lives; unasked for, unexpected, undeniably true. Nicolo let the sounds of his companion’s deepening breaths carry him toward sleep, buoyed by the certainty of this wonder they’d created. 

They would go on, together.

**Author's Note:**

> There are so many fantastic fics and headcanons interpreting "'We killed each other.'/'Many times,'" and I suppose this is mine. I do feel it probably would've taken these two quite a bit longer to reach the point they're at by the end of this story, but I wrote this largely to give myself an escape from the anxieties of current events, and so it is softer than is maybe realistic. Thank you for reading, and thank you for overlooking my anachronisms and inaccuracies.


End file.
